Rachel Maddow Seth Meyers H 2015
Lloyd Bishop/NBCLast night on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Rachel Maddow gleefully discussed the phenomenon that is Donald Trump’s campaign to be the 2016 Republican presidential nominee.
“It turns out Republican voters want Donald Trump more than they want any of the 40 other people running,” Maddow told Seth Meyers. “That is a gift from God — in terms of having this be my job.”
While Maddow and Meyers had some laughs about the silliness of Trump’s antics, Maddow, host of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, also argued that Fox is actually helping out the Trump campaign in the way that it’s structuring the first of the Republican candidate debates, to be televised Aug. 6.
Instead of allowing all of the 16 declared candidates to participate, Fox has limited the number to the top 10. Maddow expressed that she thinks it’s an odd choice, saying that they should either let all the candidates participate or hold several debates featuring a few candidates at a time.
“It’s bizarre that they’re only gonna let 10 people in. They’re going to exclude people like Chris Christie, Rick Perry, John Kasich — [and] the guy who came in second last time, my friend, Rick Santorum.” In particular, she pointed out the fact that Fox’s choice of format means that Trump has pushed the Governor of Ohio (Kasich) out of the debate in his home state. “They’re going to make him watch it from home,” lamented Maddow. “We gave Donald Trump your podium, Governor.”
The real problem with the format, she said, is that “In a real debate, guys like Donald Trump will lose the debate and therefore lose support. If you end up artificially curtailing the field, a guy like that is going to win in part, you know, just based on name recognition and celebrity.”
Maddow finally summed up the collective joy of The Donald’s presidential run for journalists and others watching from a distance — that, for better or worse, he’s managed to disrupt everyone’s expectations: “The one nice thing about it is that when you cover national politics, there’s almost never something that’s totally unpredictable. In this case, like, that debate’s gonna happen. Is he gonna pull his pants down? Like, is he gonna pull somebody else’s pants down? Is he gonna bite the head off a bat? You know, like, what else can happen?”
Meyers answered by predicting “that he brings out a nicer, bigger podium.”
Maddow suggested maybe he’d bring some cheerleaders on stage, “Like the girls that hold the round numbers in boxing matches — he’ll bring them on to score him. Or something. I don’t know.”
Watch the full video below.
